The Frost
by ArgentNoelle
Summary: Something creeps into the air like poison gas. This is what we were summoned here for, Sebastian thinks. pre-Kuroshitsuji 2014 (live action). [Sebastian/Ciel]


crossover with live action (Kuroshitsuji 2014). Pre-canon for that, AU for the other versions.

* * *

 _ **The Frost**_

* * *

It is the winter of 1892. In less than a month, the now-sixteen year old earl Phantomhive will celebrate his seventeenth birthday. Only a week ago, he had proposed to Elizabeth Midford. It was never a surprise—both had expected it since childhood, after all, and neither had ever spoken of breaking off the engagement. Yet Elizabeth had still burst into tears at his words and flung her arms around him, and Ciel had closed his eyes, clutching his hands about her shoulders as though he wanted never to let go. His face was pained, fighting between anguish and a happiness he could never admit, even to himself. But it had smoothed out, at last, to that expression Sebastian had discovered himself observing more frequently these past years. A quiet, composed air, something almost wondering, as though he were waiting for a weight that had been lifted to fall again, and every moment it didn't, this small thing unfurled, delicate, as though afraid a frost would come and blacken it.

It did not displease Sebastian. There was something so novel about this fragility, another side of that stone determination he had always observed in his young master, taking new form. It needs as much bravery to grow as it does to kill, and as with everything he did, Ciel put his all into the attempt. The paradox of his master's contentment was like sweet cream on summer berries, light over a base of bitterness and despair. It made him breathless with surprise, as though he were the one holding those trembling arms, and he paused at pouring tea, while outside, the clear winter sun shone over a brilliant blanket of white. _I'm glad it has taken so long,_ he thought.

.

A mere five days later, a message from the queen requested Ciel in private audience.

"There's a war coming, my dear boy," she said, as they sat across one another at a low table within a lavish parlor of her private rooms. Ciel had worried, for days, over the meaning of the audience, lingering over suspicion after suspicion, but here and now, he appears perfectly at ease, wearing the charming plastic smile he has perfected, his uncovered eye an impenetrable blue. It has been years since anyone but she called him a boy, and the young man with porcelain skin and long-fingered hands is anything but. It does not do for someone of his age and stature to hide himself away, and so, despite the way it pricks him, the earl Phantomhive has entered society, played the part of the dilettante to the hilt, and wears it with such a regal arrogance that Sebastian, watching, feels again that glow of admiration. Under his silks and laces, he is as cold and untouchable as marble; that flicker of an innocent smile never reaches his eye. He is assured in his beauty, proud in it; as he should be. As Sebastian designed him to be. The perfect creation, the exquisite illusion of an angel. There may have been mockery in it, but it was a careful one, still allowing for the genuine sublime. He marvelled.

"We have been making all the preparations we can for years, but now is the time for our greatest actions. One right move, one knight in position could mean the difference between victory and defeat."

Ciel murmurs his understanding.

"As my Guard Dog, you have served us faithfully these years, so it is with the utmost confidence that I give you this mission, hard as I know it will be to bear."

His master shows no outward expression of surprise, but something in his languid manner sharpens, taking note of the unusualness of her consideration. Many times has the queen sent him into situations of the utmost danger; never with warning, anything other than a friendly word. Something creeps into the air like poison gas. _This is what we were summoned here for,_ Sebastian thinks.

And so she speaks.

"You want me to… what?" the youth asks. For the first time, his voice hesitates. There is a rent in it, a wound twisting something deeper than bone. The blood rushes out. Sebastian, behind him, fixes his eyes upon the queen. She is not his queen, and he lets himself imagine walking forward, twisting a claw into her neck, watching her gag and gasp and feeling her heart fall silent between his fingers, for she would _dare_ —

The Guard Dog walks a fragile line between trusted confidante and traitor. The queen is ever quick to remind him of that, should he feel himself to have too much of a say in his own life. To be sent as a spy to a foreign land tastes bitterly of exile and betrayal, slick and oily. There is no question of refusing. There is no possibility of return.

The Phantomhive and Midford families have not yet announced the upcoming wedding, but it is as if she knows. That sudden frost that blackens the fragile leaf. It feels like stepping backward, to the child of ten who could entertain nothing but thoughts of terror and hate. It is all the more terrible because of its absence for a time. The man who walks out is a careful marionette with fire under his bones. He smiles like a corpse, careful and polite, and his eye burns. They walk out to the carriage in silence.

Even after their escort has left and they are sitting across from one another in the covered box, Ciel does not speak.

"Young master—" Sebastian dares, after a time.

"I have no wish to entertain your thoughts, Sebastian," Ciel answers coldly, his hand gripped over the curving silver skull that decorates his cane. His face stares out the window, blank and smooth. "Be silent."

They do not speak the rest of the way home.

.

In the summer of 1893, when Ciel and Elizabeth Phantomhive should have been celebrating their new marriage, the queen's Guard Dog stands in a lavish manor built for him in a land he does not know. Every morning, he and Sebastian, in his study with the door locked, go over word forms and sentences. He has forbidden the speaking of English in the house, to more quickly learn the tongue of his new home, except during these sessions. He has always been a quick and concentrated study, but his voice still stumbles as he speaks; the empty pauses between each word linger on as though telling what he would like to say. Ciel has said nothing but banalities for months. He has put himself to the challenge of language, of customs. He takes no social calls, he does not even venture onto the veranda and its tiled pavement.

Sebastian finds himself talking to fill the silence. These sessions, where the words that had become so familiar to them both might still be spoken, with care; he spends longer on the explanations than is his wont; he makes of anecdotes explanations that have Ciel's brow tightening and the master snapping out an impatient word of "get on with it."

Even that is better than the nothing that fills the air otherwise.

In the servants' half of the manor, he sits with Mey-Rin and Tanaka; the maid babbling on as though entranced with his presence until some interjection they all expect to come from Bard or Finny beside them does not come, and she falters. Even Tanaka, picking up his mug of green tea, seems a little more tired than he had been before.

All the servants had begged to come, of course. But Ciel had refused them. "The name of Phantomhive must be forgotten," he said. "I would not have all of you taken from everything you hold dear. Keep this house, and do with it as you please."

It was the evening after this announcement that the servants had gathered, all with hard, turned-down mouths and flinty eyes, that reminded one that they were guards as much as servants. "We understand the issues you'll have," Bard said without preamble, "but we can't let you go there alone. Sure, me, Finny, and Snake'll stick out like a sore thumb, but not Mey-Rin; and Tanaka even knows the language. No one will think _foreigner_ if they come along with you. They might even help your cover."

Finny nodded, his eyes shining with tears.

"You work better as a team," Ciel said, his gaze flicking down, his hands tightening behind his back.

"Yeah," Bard said, thickly.

There was a long silence that it seemed no one would be able to break. Then, "But we can't let you go alone, without anyone to protect you, says Emily," Snake added.

"We've talked about it already, we have," Mey-Rin said. "I'm willing to go with you, and you can't stop me."

That had been the end of that.

.

Ciel Genpou's wife has been hand-picked by the queen. Though she knows some English, he refuses to speak it with her, so their conversations stumble on for months while the earl builds up his armoury of weapons. There is nothing to be dissatisfied with in her. She is quiet and obedient, but with a ready wit; this, Sebastian observes, while her husband, still crawling through pleasantries and straightforward conversation, misses every reference and pun. She has some little knowledge of combat, enough to get on with. She is also a spy for the queen, and it is a different sort of isolation that she experiences in her place, no less bitter for that.

"She will spy on me as well," Ciel says to Sebastian, only once, when he remarks on the man's coldness to her, his refusal to engage. He corrects the grammar, quietly, and Ciel repeats the sentence. "She will spy on me as well."

Ciel never mentions Elizabeth. He writes to her, frequently, putting his letters to her in with his reports to the queen, and in it he talks of everything light; it is only once that he pens a poem there, full of sentiment and romance, and he berates himself harshly for it. Elizabeth's letters are the same, though she signs all hers with love and talks of closeness. The queen allows this indiscretion, perhaps persuaded by Ciel's explanation of how dear family must be, and the way his kind-hearted cousin worries; perhaps realizing that one little moment of rebellion, carefully controlled, will prevent a greater one, unforseen. The lady has publically been engaged to another, and this they never speak of. Sebastian thinks that she would have moved on from his master eventually and found a man to suit her heart, but the quickness of this decision speaks that it is not hers. He feels something shiver underneath his skin at that, clawing through the careful façade of unconcern. He has grown fond of the lady, and she deserves more than to be used so by the queen, when her honour would have forbid her to act against this plan anyway. This impatient clawing, this anger, boils and rises under his skin, while outwardly, he prepares every trapping of home. He waits for Ciel to speak of anything, but the master is immovable. It is left to him to rage and rail against it, to feel that anguish of protection for a woman his master loves.

.

On the nights after the earl Genpou and his wife couple, he leaves without a word as soon as propriety admits. One evening, as Sebastian walks past a half-open door, he sees her putting her robe back on, alone once again after her husband has left. He stops, unnoticed, and feels a flicker of sympathy for her unnoticed strength, the way her hands never falter as she ties the fabric closed. The room still smells of sex, and her eyes are hard. He watches her build up her armour, piece by piece, until she can be the perfect wife again; he recognizes the tear-track hidden on the curve of her cheek. The queen did not want a happy marriage, she wanted a pair of spies, and Sebastian looks over, when he can, the letters she sends to the queen of her own missions, and her observations of Ciel's obsequiousness. They will never contain anything to make the queen wonder at her Guard Dog's loyalty.

Every time Ciel enters his own rooms, he locks the door, as though afraid of the empty hallways beyond. This manor has never belonged to him. The months pass, and he does everything that is expected, and nothing more. His nightmares have returned; the ones that feature grasping hands and hot mouths, the ones where he is helpless to resist. He spends evenings in the bath, and still he shivers; he is hollowed out. His soul begins to reek, an ashen wind covering everything with fine white dust. If the earl would get to know his wife better, perhaps these memories would not trouble him as much, perhaps his mind would more easily separate then from now. But it is true that she will spy. There can be no trust between them, and Ciel has never, since Sebastian knew him, been acquainted with love; only trust.

He trusted a bare few. The servants: Tanaka, Mey-Rin, Bard, Finny, and Snake. Elizabeth, his friend, his companion from childhood who never made a question of her desires, but would speak straightforwardly of her loyalty and love for him for years, with all the power of her sword and her sun and all that was gay and free behind it. And Sebastian.

"Young master, you will kill yourself if you continue like this," Sebastian says, in the evening, when Ciel has entered the bed-chamber clad in the shirt that serves as his nightgown, striding toward the bed as though set to ignore the butler beside him.

"What did I say about speaking in English?" Ciel snaps. Sebastian admires the way his careful pronunciation is better now than it was even a fortnight ago, but he does not let anything deter him. He continues in the same language he started.

"As your butler, it is my job to care for your well-being. And I cannot in good conscience allow you to let yourself fade away in such a…"

Ciel laughs. He lowers himself to the side of the bed and laughs as though he is trying to cry, high and wild. "In good conscience?" he says, cuttingly. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you weren't a demon at all, Sebastian." He does not recognize the switch; that he is speaking the same syllables as his butler.

"Young master, please—"

"What do you care for my well-being? You'll get my soul in the end, won't you?"

"And if you never finish your revenge?" Sebastian says sharply. "You've done nothing toward it since we came here."

"Have I abandoned it?" Ciel asks, spreading his arms wide, encompassing with that mocking gesture all the room. "Take my soul, then, I don't care!"

"You don't mean that," Sebastian says.

"I'm human," Ciel returns. "It is in our power to lie."

"And it is in my power to tell the truth," Sebastian says. He does not look away from Ciel's eyes; they are wide, blown with hysteria, still staring at him; the perfect, etched star on the dead one and the blue like clear glass. He steps forward. "Give me an order," he begs. "Tell me to arrange an accident for the queen and I will. Tell me to kill your wife, or persuade Elizabeth to come here with you. Tell me anything. But let me help—"

"There's nothing you can do to help," Ciel says. They are close enough, now, that the heat of Ciel's body, fighting still, burns against him.

"Please," Sebastian says. Ciel is reaching out for him, clawing at him, as though he is not sure whether he wants to cut him or strike him or pull him closer, but that is what he does, pulling Sebastian onto the bed and mouthing hot trails along his neck, pressing his hardness against Sebastian while his wild eyes seem to scream.

"Master," he says, quietly, anchoring Ciel with the sound of his voice. "You have never expressed such an interest before."

"I don't have a choice, do I?" Ciel says.

"I will always give you a choice."

"I know. That's why it has to be you," Ciel says, while he grinds into him uncaringly, his fingernails digging crescents of blood into Sebastian's shoulders. "You're the only thing left… the only thing left that belongs to me…"

"Always," Sebastian says.

"I hate it here," Ciel says. "But I need to do my duty, you understand… what am I without it?"

 _You are still worthy,_ Sebastian wants to say. _You are still beautiful._ But he does not. He stays quiet and lets the hot angry words of his master spill forth like a tide against him. "I hate it here, and I'm beginning to hate my country too. I never thought I could… I was loyal enough, wasn't I?" he asks. "I was going to marry Elizabeth. I promised her all, everything until my death. What is left of me if I can't keep my promises?"

"You have always kept your promises to me," Sebastian says, because that is all he can say. He feels like an echo, as though he can say nothing but what his master has said. He can find no way to make it right, to comfort him; all he has is the truth.

"I know," Ciel says. "I have to. I will. Sebastian. Sebastian…" he says nothing else but Sebastian's name, and Sebastian allows himself to reach up between them, to brush his fingertips across his master's face, to turn the tide from fury into that moment of calm quiet, slowing Ciel's movements, giving him the space to breathe.

x.

Ciel spends time with his children, in the uncomplicated nature of those who are too young for subterfuge, who wear openly everything to see in their innocence. He is a good father, Sebastian observes; a much better father than he ever made a husband, although he had not wanted it. Elizabeth writes of her pride in him, of the boy and girl that she has only ever heard of in letters. _I feel almost as if I know them,_ she writes. _I am so happy for you_.

It is enough to lift some of the shroud over his soul, but there is nothing left of the thing that had once tried to unfurl itself. For the first time, Sebastian wonders _what if?_

He had been so curious to see what it would have made.

And the letters that pass continue to bear messages from the queen, missions that keep the two of them out on late nights and sun-struck afternoons, fog-drenched mornings and evenings without a breath of wind. Slowly, the pieces begin to come together.

 _Soon_ , Sebastian thinks.

.

"The one who killed my parents," Ciel says. "Is it the queen?"

"Yes," Sebastian answers. If he had only known this earlier, he thinks… but what, then? It is a mortal folly to be so concerned with the past. It is what it is.

.

It is 1901. Ciel is twenty-eight when they return to England for the last time. The death of the queen is carried out easily, in the early hours of a January morning. Then they return to the manor, still and quiet in the almost-dawn. The end of an age is upon them, the world will tremble and crack upon its moorings and in the wake of it, the lines of Empire will be different. But here upon the familiar drive, the low, lying grass and the glitter of the sun, it is like stepping into a dream.

"Young master?" Finny cries. "You're home? Bard! Snake! He's home!"

Snake is no longer a shy, uncertain youth, but a quiet man who carries himself with assurance. Bard has grown old, though his grin is as familiar as ever. Only Finnian hasn't changed. He looks as young as the day they left, and he cries as he hugs the young master tightly.

"Figures you wouldn't look a day older either," Bard remarks. Sebastian is about to correct him—he has been careful to mimic aging, so as not to call attention, these past years—when he looks down at himself and realizes that Bard is right; sometime as they stepped through this door, he has become what he was. His master watches him with something considering in his eye.

"Huh," he says, quietly. "So it is."

They dally the evening away. Stories are told; the servants all eager to hear what has happened to each other in the years since; each remembering a story for Mey-Rin, and Tanaka—he is still alive, isn't he?

"Yes, of course," Ciel answers, smiling. Tanaka, also, has not grown older: and somehow, this is not a surprise.

When it is finally late, and they have shut the door behind them into his lord's chambers, Ciel sighs, and a tension in his shoulders unwinds. "So this is it," he says. "Now I die."

"Yes," Sebastian says. He takes out a nightgown, and by magic it is his master's size. He asks if he might be given the honor. So Ciel lets himself be undressed, reaching a hand now and then to catch Sebastian in his movements, and there is something soft in his look.

 _If only it might have taken longer,_ Sebastian thinks. But he knows to keep his promises as well.

"I will endeavor to be gentle," he says.

"No," Ciel replies.

It is his last request, so Sebastian acquiesces, though he has never been partial to the taste of agony and pain in a soul's death. Just as he suspected, it leaves a lingering sour note in the otherwise exquisite flavour, but it is a small enough thing to bear, for his master, at the end.

.

"He's dead?" Finny gasps.

He that is no longer Sebastian explains, quietly, that the young master knew he was going to die; that was why they had come back.

At last, the quiet that has fallen among the three break. "So what are you going to do now?" Bard asks.

"...I don't know," Sebastian says.

Ciel Phantomhive had been his masterpiece, and now he is gone. He feels set loose; adrift, and surprised.

"You can stay as long as you'd like," Snake says. "We all agree." Some of the snakes on his shoulders seem to nod their heads.

Of course he can't stay, Sebastian thinks; but as long as he's here he might as well help with the tidying up. The afternoon turns to evening again, and he goes back to his old room; and then, somehow, he never really decides to leave. The winter shatters into a spring glorious and green, and while the outside world shakes itself apart, the quiet gardens bloom. He doesn't realize how long he has stayed, or that the cycle of winter and spring, summer and autumn again has passed so many times, until all at once Snake is marrying a girl in town, and Bard is passing away, peacefully, in his sleep. The morning dawns when it is just himself and Finny in the old house, and they spend their days outside under the sun, while the gardener works and he lies on the patio and watches cats with the time that seems to unfurl itself before him, endless.

"It's too bad," one cat, a favourite of his, says, once. "I can see you're going to leave, soon. You gave good scratches."

Sebastian falls over backward. "You can talk?" he asks, in astonishment.

The cat gives him a haughty glance. "Of course we can. It's just that most things don't take the time to learn how to listen. Hasn't that been what you were here for, all these years?"

"I don't know," Sebastian says. "I've been thinking. Or not thinking. I've just… been."

They tell him things; things he doesn't necessarily want to hear. They gossip, lazily, in the sun, and tell him about what has changed in the world, while he has been in this endless garden. And he starts to feel that restlessness under his skin again, that one that had once pushed him to travel the world, to take note of every thing to learn. He feels as though something is unfurling within him, peeking out of the ground after the frost.

And so he is not surprised when one day, he hears someone reaching out for him, a cry of pain and anger, a cry reinforced with memory and sorrow. _Sebastian!_

It is far away, on the other side of the world, an echo of both the familiar and the strange; a child without a home and a hope. And it is searching for him: it knows his name.

 _Yes,_ he thinks. _She is calling me_.

.

.

.


End file.
